Movie review: Kelly Mcdonald puts all the pieces together in 'Puzzle'

By Al Alexander/For the Patriot Ledger

Friday

Aug 10, 2018 at 5:34 AMAug 12, 2018 at 12:02 PM

Putting the pieces together of a marginalized wife and mother is the objective of “Puzzle,” a sweet, but overwritten character study providing star Kelly Macdonald a too-rare chance to show what the longtime character actor can do with a leading role. And what she does is knock it out of the park.

It’s the perfect match between part and performer, taking full advantage of a face that always seems to be looking at the world with a repressed sense of wonder. It practically calls out, “take me away from here.” And “here” is a cluttered blue-collar home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which Macdonald’s Agnes is expected to keep operating like a well-oiled machine in service of her doltish bear of a husband, Louie (David Denman), and her two grown sons, Ziggy (Bubba Weiler), and Gabe (Austin Abrams).

In the opening scenes you’d think you’re looking at a 1950s period piece, as Agnes works her rear off catering her own birthday party – without one guest offering to lend a hand. But later, when she’s unwrapping her presents – by herself – up pops the gift of an iPhone to inform us that this is indeed the 21st century. Your heart sinks, and then soars after she opens the next package, a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Always a fan of how geometric patterns fit together, it’s like a life preserver tossed to her by fate.

In minutes flat, she pieces the map of the world together. And the sense of joy and purpose that crosses Macdonald’s face is something to behold. Soon, these puzzles become a form of crack. Agnes shirks her duties to her church and family and begins lying about her frequent disappearances and clandestine afternoon train trips to New York. Worse, she can’t bring herself to the confessional to spill her rapidly piling-up sins, the wickedest being her sudden sexual attraction to a fellow puzzle fanatic in Irrfan Khan's Robert, an eccentric Manhattan millionaire as bored with his life as Agnes is with hers.

You can pretty much guess the rest. And, yes, we’re building, as you’d expect, to the big puzzle-solving tournament where Agnes and Robert will compete in the doubles competition for a grand prize of an all-expense trip to Belgium. How writers Oren Moverman (an Oscar nominee for “The Messenger”) and newcomer Polly Mann could dare be so hoary is astonishing. Lucky for them and producer-turned-director Marc Turtletaub, Macdonald is around to repeatedly pull them out of the lurch with a performance that exists almost entirely in her wonderfully expressive face.

It transcends the lame script, as Macdonald fills in almost every cavernous gap with a look that, as I like to paraphrase, launches a thousand feelings. And she dutifully makes sure you always know what Agnes is thinking, even when she saying nothing, which is often. It’s much the same for Khan’s recently divorced sad sack, Robert, who just happens to operate on exactly the same wavelength as Agnes. What are the odds?

Their twice-a-week afternoon trysts around the puzzle table in his Midtown brownstone may be chaste, but they are a definite source of romantic heat. And you adore sharing their company. Yet, like Agnes, you can’t escape the guilt from what these dalliances are doing to the other three men in her life back in Bridgeport, where Louie and Ziggy slave away at the family’s barely-above-water auto-body shop and Gabe contemplates whether to attend college or make a pilgrimage to Tibet. Also, like her, you justify her platonic fling by how much the boys take for granted all that Agnes does – shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundering and bookkeeping. Is it her fault she so desperately needs liberating?

In the end, Agnes is ready to implode, as once again she’s trapped; only this time it’s between a future with Robert and a continued slavish existence with her family. How she resolves it is about the only surprise in an otherwise relentlessly predictable scenario. But Macdonald somehow makes it all seem fresh, probably because we’re never seen a performance quite as deep and telling as hers. You love Macdonald madly, almost as much as you’d desire seeing her get a chance to attack an even meatier role, like say the similarly long-overlooked Sally Hawkins did last year in “The Shape of Water.” Sadly, both are stuck in a business that values glamour over talent, which seems to automatically relegate them to supporting roles. That’s why little, albeit flawed, films like “Puzzle” can be such a joy. They give these women a chance to – like Agnes – breakout and show the world just how truly special they are.